


A Slight Error In Judgement

by orphan_account



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Gen, No Romance, No Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:02:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7687393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dib had made a small error, and now he was going to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Slight Error In Judgement

Dib had made a small error, and now he was going to die.

He was pretty sure he was going to die, anyway. It wasn’t a possibility he’d thought of when he summoned the thing, but now it was looking likely. His feet were aching and heavy, his clawed-open hip had made a giant sticky mess of blood all over his leg and his breathing was so loud and raspy that he almost couldn’t hear the roars over his own whoops for air. He was definitely slowing, and the thing behind him was catching up. It was all teeth, and rippling green warts, and bulging eyes. A few fins. He hadn’t gotten that great of a look at it, with all the running.

He’d never even found out what it was called!

It was too late to regret that now, but it wasn’t too late to take Zim down with him. Not yet, anyway.

Dib turned and Zim’s hideous green house popped into view at the end of the street. Dib only had to get there without being caught and this monster would finish Zim off after it was done with him. With Dib’s last action, he could save humanity, lay open Zim’s base and be remembered in death as the hero he’d been!

He found he had one last burst of speed in him.

He made it into the house. The door hadn’t been locked, maybe GIR had been careless or maybe it was just broken. The room was empty.

The monster slammed into the wall behind him.

The thing couldn’t get in yet! It was too big to go through the open door. It would break its way in, of course. It was powerful. But maybe Dib didn’t have to die after all, if he found a place to hide before the monster came in, if the monster found Zim first, and if Dib could escape while it was distracted.

Where to hide? Up or down?

The machinery under the floor was whirring. Zim was coming up, the elevator was occupied. Dib would hide in the ceiling. The knowledge that he just might live after all gave him the energy to scale the wall and ignore his throbbing hip and feet. He buried himself in cables and huddled there, heaving for air. His hands were shaking. He wouldn’t be able to hang out here forever. Hopefully he wouldn’t need long.

“What! Is going on?” Zim fumed down below.

The wall crashed inwards and the monster stood there in all its glory. It screeched. Zim screeched in reply and stumbled backwards, almost falling over. 

The monster dashed Zim to the floor with one swipe. Zim landed in a heap of bright alien colors, like a burst water balloon, spilling transparent pink goo onto the floor.

Dib leaned forward despite himself. The whole murder had only taken ten seconds. What had taken Dib a year had taken this thing ten seconds. Except- wait.

With a whirring of machinery Zim rose up on gleaming metal legs. Except Zim was unconscious- his head hung loosely on his neck, eyes closed. His belly was torn open. But he was still moving.

The robot brain was awake. The robot brain was faster, dodging another blow from the claws. The robot brain had blades.

The monster staggered backwards, screeching. Black fluid poured out of its side. Black fluid stained Zim’s robotic legs.

Zim couldn’t even see. His eyes were closed. He was unconscious. He looked like he might be _dead._

Another blow and another jet of black blood. The monster was weakening already. Two more blows and the thing lay on the floor, gasping and jerking.

Zim, or the machinery that was part of him, did not finish it, but left the monster to slowly expire in a widening pool of oily gore. The threat neutralized, the blades cleaned themselves off on each other like praying mantis arms, gently deposited their body on the ground, and folded themselves away into Zim's unassuming little back pod.

The monster wheezed out one last breath and died.

Zim lay curled on his side on the floor. In the new stillness of the room, Dib could hear labored breathing.

The back of Dib’s coat was stuck to his back with sweat.

He forced stiff fingers to open and he made his way back down to the floor. For a moment he stood still, not thinking about anything.

As if drawn by a magnet he stepped through all the fluids on the floor with little squelching noises until he stood over his fallen enemy.

Zim’s flank rose and fell unevenly. Through the split skin of his belly Dib could see some kind of alien organ- it looked like a wet wad of chewed bubble gum. Scrabbly little hands lay half-curled by his chest. Antennae trembling at the tips. Knees slightly bent. Uniform fouled in several places by too-thick monster blood and too-thin alien blood.

Little strands of something were already sprouting from the lips of the open wound, the machinery beginning to patch up its flesh component.

Zim made a noise in his throat. Dib saw that his eyes had opened and were looking straight ahead in unseeing fear.

Zim made another noise. Dib turned and bolted from the base.

* * *

He sighted Zim across the hallway, a bright spot of color amid milling bodies.

Dib drew closer, limping on the side of his aching, bandaged hip. The alien was nosing about for something it had left in its locker. From behind Dib saw scrawny arms and legs and a furtive, twitchy manner of looking all around.

Zim turned and glared. “Dib!”

“Yeah.” Dib’s mouth was dry.

Zim gathered a stack of books to his chest, holding them like a shield. “What do you want now, you large-skulled swine?” His lip curled in disgust, showing off dull, blunt, too-even teeth of a fleshy pink tint.

_Why haven’t you killed me?_

He did not, of course, ask that.

“Nothing.” One swipe of those blades and Dib would be bleeding to death on the floor. “I don’t want anything.” There wasn’t a scratch on Zim anymore, not even a paper cut. “Just- you know. I don’t want…” He backed away. “Anything.”

Zim’s jaw tightened. “Good.” He turned away, then looked back over his shoulder with a scowl. “I know it was you.”

“You know what was me?”

“Clever.” Zim viewed him as if he was a stink bomb that was about to go off. “Watch your back, human.”

Dib planned to.


End file.
